RPT-COLUMN-U.S. crude export controls are crumbling: Kemp

(Repeats with no changes. John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own)

By John Kemp

LONDON Nov 6 (Reuters) - In the three months ending in
August, the United States and Canada swapped a record amount of
crude oil with each other, one of the more bizarre consequences
of outdated U.S. export controls.

true

Because U.S. oil producers cannot export crude oil to any
other country, crude is sent north to refineries in Canada, even
if it would make more sense to ship it to refineries in Europe,
Latin America or Asia.

In some instances, crude is even shipped past U.S.
refineries on the East Coast that want to take it and on up
north because of the antiquated restrictions on coastwise trade
within the United States imposed by the Jones Act ("Canada's far
east refinery swaps Iraqi crude for U.S. shale", Nov. 4).

U.S. oil producers have been permitted to export unrefined
petroleum to Canada since the 1980s, when the Reagan
administration exempted Canadian refiners from the general ban
on crude exports.

In June 1985, President Ronald Reagan issued a formal
determination that "domestic crude oil may be exported to Canada
for consumption or use therein."

As required by law, the president made formal findings that
crude exports were in the national interest; would not diminish
the total quantity or quality of crude available in the United
States; would not increase reliance on imported oil; and were
consistent with the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the
Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975.

In December 1988, shortly before leaving office, Reagan made
additional findings to permit exports of up to 50,000 barrels
per day (b/d) of more severely restricted Alaskan crude for
consumption or use in Canada as part of the U.S.-Canada Free
Trade Agreement.

But in an era when U.S. oil production was declining and the
country was increasingly relying on imports to supply its
refineries, domestic oil producers made little use of this
flexibility to market unrefined oil north of the border. Between
1985 and 2011, U.S. exports to Canada generally averaged well
under 50,000 b/d, according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA).

Thanks to the shale revolution, however, U.S. output has
jumped by more than 3.7 million b/d (75 percent) since 2007.
Increasing amounts of U.S. crude are now being exported north as
producers and traders try to find alternatives to saturated
markets at home. Between June and August 2014, a record 378,000
b/d of U.S. crude was exported for refining in Canada.

But at the same time as more and more U.S. crude is heading
north, a record amount of Canadian is heading south. In the same
three months, Canada exported a record 2.8 million b/d of crude
to the United States -- up from 2.5 million in the same period
in 2013 and 2012, 2.2 million in 2011 and just 1.5 million b/d
back in 2003. (link.reuters.com/zyc43w)

SINGLE REFINING AREA

Two-way trade in crude allows both countries to optimise
their refining assets. Light U.S. crude is being exchanged for
heavier Canadian production to enable refineries on both sides
of the border to use their distillation facilities more
efficiently.

In effect, North America is fast becoming a single refining
area with free trade in both crude and refined products between
the United States and Canada. But it also makes a complete
mockery of the remaining restrictions on crude oil exports to
the rest of the world.

In theory, U.S. crude can be exported to Canada for
"consumption or use therein" but once the oil has left the
United States there are no records and no controls on where the
products refined from it end up.

Refiners in both the United States and Canada can export
gasoline, diesel, home heating fuel and jet fuel almost anywhere
in the world without any restrictions.

CRUMBLING CONTROLS

In the words of the 1979 Export Administration Act, "it is
the policy of the United States to use export controls ... to
restrict the export of goods where necessary to protect the
domestic economy form the excessive drain of scarce materials
and to reduce the serious inflationary impact of foreign demand"
(Section 3(2)(C)).

But if that is the purpose of the crude export controls,
they are both failing and unnecessary. The ban has become a sort
of leaky dam. In August 2014, the United States produced 8.6
million b/d of crude (including condensates). But it exported
390,000 b/d of crude, as well as 1.3 million b/d of diesel,
400,000 b/d of gasoline, 200,000 b/d of jet fuel, 330,000 b/d of
heavy fuel oil and 550,000 b/d of petroleum coke.

All told, crude and product exports from the United States
amounted to more than half of total domestic crude production.
Given the law of one price, U.S. consumers and businesses cannot
be protected from international price fluctuations when so much
crude and products is already being sent abroad.

Even the remaining restrictions are beginning to crumble.
Two companies have received permission from the U.S. government
to export minimally processed condensates, in a controversial
ruling earlier this year by the Commerce Department.

Now a third company, BHP Billiton , relying
on those earlier rulings as a precedent, is moving to export
condensates without securing prior clearance, in effect daring
the government to commence enforcement proceedings ("New oil
shipment shows cracks in U.S. export ban," WSJ, Nov. 4).

Consumers and businesses in North America already pay
international prices for refined fuels (adjusted by the cost of
transport) -- as shown in a recent series of studies by the U.S.
Energy Information Administration and private consultants.

So the idea that the U.S. crude export ban is reserving
scarce petroleum supplies for consumers and businesses in the
United States (and Canada) or protecting them from price
increases is simply wrong.

TRANSATLANTIC PARTNERS?

The main effect of the remaining crude export controls is to
distort trade in crude oil and refined products (as well as
creating an enormous amount of lucrative work for lawyers).

The United States and Canada have now created in practice
what they have long had in theory: a free trade area in crude
oil. But like other regional free trade agreements, this one
discriminates against trading partners outside the area.

In effect, the export controls divert U.S. crude towards
Canada when it might be more profitable and more efficient to
sell it to refiners elsewhere.

The European Union, where refineries are particularly
disadvantaged by the export ban, has begun to press the United
States for it to be lifted as part of an eventual Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership agreement.

"I think unquestionably there will be pressure internally in
the U.S. as well as externally from others like Europe, who
should be putting much more pressure on the U.S. than they are
quite frankly" to ease the ban, Ian Taylor, the head of Vitol,
the world's largest independent oil trader, told Reuters in an
interview earlier this week.

"There's no doubt there's going to be more and more lobbying
for the free flow of crude oil," he added ("U.S. oil patch still
Klondike for world's biggest traders", Nov. 5).

TIME FOR CONGRESS TO ACT

In the meantime, the remaining export controls resemble a
bizarre relic. They don't protect U.S. consumers and businesses
from fuel shortages. They don't limit price rises. They don't
even really stop the export of oil any more. They just create
numerous distortions, legal uncertainty, and provide a full
employment act for lobbyists, lawyers and government staff.

In January 2014, Lisa Murkowski, the top-ranked Republican
on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called the
patchwork of controls on export controls "antiquated" and
insisted "it is time to renovate this regulatory edifice,
modernizing it for a 21st century in which the United States is
a forward-leaning, outward-facing leader on energy, the
environment and trade."

Then she was merely a member of the relatively powerless
minority. From January 2015, when the 114th Congress assembles,
she will likely be the committee chair, and one of the most
influential policymakers on energy matters for a Republican
Party that will control both chambers of Congress.